


Attack on Haven

by CommonEvilMastermind



Series: Ellara Lavellan Collection [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Attack on Haven, F/M, Fluff and also fluff, Lost and Found, Realization of Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:51:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Corypheus attacks Haven, the loss of the Inquisitor affects him more than he originally suspected.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thanks to Eagle-Eyes for typo wrangling!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attack on Haven

“Run!” Lavellan screamed as the dragon descended upon them. They ran, the Herald at their heels, man and elf and qunari racing over the bloody snow. Behind them, the blighted dragon roared.

They flew for the sanctuary of the Chantry, for the hidden passage through the mountains. Their death came close behind them – they had failed, the path was still open, the dragon would come and they would be morsels in his claws, in his teeth. Dorian pounded through the Chantry door first, followed by The Iron Bull and Solas close behind. The elf turned, meaning to slam the door behind Lavellan –

She wasn’t there.

“Lavellan!” He shouted into the snow. She was right behind him, she had been just behind him when the dragon –

Back by the trebuchet, the dragon screamed in victory. Red magic lanced through the darkness. Was it his imagination – did he hear a woman cry out in pain?

“Ellara!” he bellowed, but a giant hand crashed into his chest before he could charge back into the snow.

“Move!” The Iron Bull roared, slamming the door to the Chantry shut against the wind. “Move, move, move!”

Solas stared at the great wooden doors for one eternal second, then pivoted on his heel and raced after his companions. Gone, she was gone, she couldn’t, she had been right behind him –

Something boomed overhead, a percussive beat they felt in their bones, and a sound like thunder itself had come to play with dragons in the snow.

“She’s bringing down the mountain!” Solas yelled as they clattered down the steps of the Chantry. There, at the far end – a small stone tunnel, door yawning open. The secret path that Roderick had spoken of. They barreled through it. Behind them, wood and snow twisted and screamed under the weight of the avalanche. The Chantry cells collapsed behind them. Dorian made as if to slow.

“Keep running!” Bull ordered. “The tunnel might be next!”

That gave the three men a second – third? fourth? wind. They sprinted through the dark corridor, Solas and Dorian casting bright magic to light the way. More stairs, leading up, worn smooth over centuries. They went up and up and up until Solas’ legs were screaming with pain. Yet still they climbed. Dorian stumbled – The Iron Bull picked him up bodily over one shoulder and continued without breaking stride. Was that cold air, meeting them on the staircase? Without a warning, the three burst through a door and they were out.

Dorian fell off of Bull’s shoulder and landed in the snow, swearing fluently in Tevinter. Solas wondered how he had the breath – he pulled cool air into his burning lungs, hands braced against his thighs, and commanded himself to stay on his feet. He was mostly successful.

The refugees of Haven spread out before them in a long line of torches, a stream of flickering fire winding through the mountain. Some were sobbing, others gray-faced and bandaged, but most were resolutely picking their way forwards through the snow, with everything they could carry on their backs or dragged on makeshift sleds behind them.

“Solas!” Leliana’s voice cut through the wind. Solas tried to stand up straight and hissed when his spasming muscles protested. The spymaster ran up to them. “You made it. Are there anymore coming? Where is the Herald?”

“We’re the last ones out,” The Iron Bull told her simply. The look he gave her was not unkind. “The chapel collapsed on the backs of our heads. The Herald brought the mountain down.”

“And she-?” The question hung heavy in the air. Solas couldn’t bring himself to answer.

“She was right behind us,” Dorian murmured from his pile in the snow.

“Just not close enough.” Bull hauled the Tevinter mage up by his collar. “Come on, Vint. We got a long way to go yet.”

“We’re moving?” Dorian sputtered. “Where exactly do you plan to go?”

Leliana ran a hand across her face. She looked old in the flickering light. “There’s a valley, five miles onward. There should be some basic supplies there, and it’s protected against the wind.”

“But what about the dragon?” Dorian hissed.

“The dragon and his master have no further need for us,” Solas reminded him grimly. “They got what they came for.”

The group fell silent, imagining a small, slender woman under the snow.

“Do you think she could have survived?” Dorian asked weakly.

“She dropped a mountain on top of her head,” The Iron Bull reminded him. “That’s not something you just walk away from.”

Dorian looked up at the Qunari, argument on his tongue – then deflated. “Five miles, you say?” He turned to the river of refugees.

“If you get too tired, Vint, I’ll carry you.” The Iron Bull offered. They walked off, bickering without heat.

“Solas.” Leliana’s voice was soft. Solas started, realizing he had been staring at the door in the hillside from which Ellara would not come out. He gave the spymaster a nod and followed after Dorian and Bull, leaning on his staff.

She was gone.

A distant part of him knew he needed to think, to plan, to reform his strategy now that Corypheus had a dragon and the mark was no more. So many rifts still open. He should be thinking, should be -

But all he could see was copper-red hair shining in the firelight, amber eyes laughing in the sun.

He was a fool, to have pinned so much on her. One mortal creature, a shadow of an Elvhan. But she had been his only chance. His power had sunk into her bones, she had not broken under its weight. She, a mortal, had lived. Had thrived. Solas walked for hours, slowly, alongside the refugees. He should be helping tend to their injuries. All he could see was the set of her jaw when she had sworn to protect him. Whatever it took.

She had been a stranger, a Dalish branded with Mythal’s tree, and she had stood barefoot in the snow and promised he would not come to harm. They had spent long hours walking together as she asked him about his travels. She was the last to sleep and the first to rise and yet still asked him for lessons in dreaming the Fade.

Even among his own people, in his own time, who had so openly accepted that spirits were beings worthy of freedom? In the long millennia of his life, how many had asked to accompany him to dream in dusty ruins? Who else had asked for tales of stories, songs, battlefields long forgotten?

Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf, leader of the rebellion, had never lacked for eager students. Solas, fade-walker, friend of spirits, was not so lucky. He did not expect to find a pupil, not here.

And then he had. And she was gone.

Solas walked, one foot in front of the other through the snow, and was surprised to find he mourned. She had been the Herald, a Dalish, a figure to be watched and wary of, the ignorant vessel of his power.

He did not realize she had also been a friend. Da’len. The word, in his day, had meant more than a simple diminutive – it was someone you looked after, taught and took care of, guided and loved. A protégé/sister/child/cousin.

Family.

Had she become so to him, in so little time? He rolled the thought in his head as he walked, exhausted, over the snow.

Da’len.

And now she was gone.

~

Ellara Lavellen stared up at a mound of snow and broken beams and disapproved of dying.

This was the third time in as many weeks that she had surfaced from the black to find herself broken and aching, muscles screaming in pain. This time there was no shemlen bed or animal pelts on the wall, no excitable girl come to drop potions on the floor. Only the keening of the wind and the pounding of her head and the merciless, biting cold.

Herald, she was cold.

She tried to move and regretted it. Subsequent attempts proved equally pleasant. The stone walls bent and twisted as she moved. She willed them into focus. They refused.

She turned over until she lay on her stomach, then ordered arms and legs to lever her upright. On the fifth try they obeyed. She stood there, swaying, until the room lessened its spin.

She was underground. In a tunnel. She had been wet – _sweat_ , her memories prompted, _blood,_ and now her clothes were frozen to her skin. She touched her hair and it cracked, matted to her skull. Additional investigations revealed a lump on the back of her head the size of a quail’s egg.

She decided to ignore that for now.

Part of her wanted to take inventory of cuts, aches, wounds. She quickly lost count. Her feet made up their own mind and started to shuffle over the snow down the tunnel.

It was better than staying here to die.

Movement seemed to help. Every nerve in her body was still quietly screaming from when that _thing_ had tried to rip the mark from her flesh. Her first few steps gave them something else to complain about. Her head appreciated watching one bare foot lurch in front of the other instead of trying to make the walls stand still.

Her toes were not supposed to be that shade of white. That much she was sure.

She was able to pick up speed as she went, one foot in front of the other in a rhythm that soothed the pounding in her skull. One foot in front of the other. There were steps leading down into a larger cavern.

And something screamed.

It was the shrill scream of a predator, a demon’s cry. Ellara felt overcome by despair – she could hardly walk, her staff was gone. This, then, was where she would die. But no. She had something left to do yet, stop the monster built with red. She had just brought down a mountain, like hell she would die here, alone as food for a rogue demon.

Ellara shouted her rage into the echoing chamber and her mark sang and something opened with a crack.

It was, oddly, the air itself.

Power thrummed through her veins, a single note that punched a hole in the nature of reality. The small rift hummed in her bones. Fascinated, she watched as the demon – no, demons, two of them – shrieked and were yanked through.

The rift closed with a satisfied snap.

“Well.” Ellara stood alone in the cave, mystified. “That’s new.”

Another short tunnel proved the exit. It was mere momentum that carried her into the night – the world outside was dark, wind whipping snow across an icy landscape. A smarter woman might wait until dawn, until the storm ran down, would use her fire magic and the scrap wood from the tunnel to gather warmth and rest.

Ellara walked into the snow. If she sat down, she would not get up again. If she stopped, she would sit down, and she would not get up again.

Best, then, to keep moving.

She headed towards the only thing she could see in the whirling white – a cleft between two rocks in the mountain. It was probably the wrong way. She would walk until she fell and froze to death in the snow – but that was better than lying down, here and now. So Ellara walked, one foot in front of the other. Letting her steps lead her where they may.

Time passed, but it did not touch her. There were only her feet in the snow, one in front of the other. The ground rose and fell and rose.

Her feet were kind, not asking where they were going or how they would know when they arrived. They even stopped telling her they were cold or in pain. They merely kept walking, one in front of another. Then again.

The wind muttered darkly in her ears. One foot in front of the other. Then again. Something shifted, a note changing. She listened. There was a wolf nearby, howling.

Ellara laughed. She would not die alone, a failed god in the snow. “Fen’Harel!” she called. “Fen’Harel! I’m here now, come and find me!”

A wolf howled again, slightly farther away. “Fen’Harel! I’m calling you! I have a good joke. You’ll like it. We’re the only ones left, Wolf. They thought me a god – we can laugh for days and days.”

Only the wind replied.

“Fen’Harel!” she shouted. “Fen’Harel! Don’t leave me here!” One foot in front of the other. A wolf call in the distance – she angled towards it. “Fen’Harel! Fen’Harel!”

~

“Fen’Harel! Fen’Harel!”

The blood drained from Solas’ face and he whipped around, staring at the mountain pass. The last of the refugees had cleared it an hour ago. He was just setting up a bedroll under a canvas cover when the wind started playing tricks on him.

“Fen’Harel!”

There it was, weak and distant. He wasn’t imagining it – someone was calling his name.

She was calling his name.

That was, by every account, impossible. The Herald was dead, buried under fifty tons of snow and rock. And he was not Fen’Harel any longer. He was Solas – scholar, fade-walker, apostate.

He stood, ears aching for another sound. There was nothing. It was nothing. A product of an overtired mind. He should lie down and sleep, search the Fade for any spirit nearby. Instead, he picked up his staff and coaxed his body forward once more.

“Solas?” Seeker Cassandra looked at him wearily as he went by. “Where are you going?”

“I thought I heard something,” he called back to her. “Up there, on the mountain pass.”

“The wolves have been howling,” Commander Cullen said grimly, poking at a campfire.

“No.” Solas moved faster without conscious decision. “No, it was not the wolves.”

He heard the Seeker mutter darkly as she got up, the Commander’s deep sigh as he straightened, their footfalls coming behind him. The path up the mountain was worn smooth by too many feet. Solas slipped up snow-covered grass and kept going, breaking into a slow jog.

It couldn’t be.

It was impossible.

They reached the crest, rounded the curve. There, in the snow, a small dark shape. Copper-red hair gleamed in the torchlight. Something crackled green.

“There! It’s her!” Cullen shouted.

“Thank the Maker,” cried Cassandra.

Solas raced down the path, half falling by her side. He rolled her limp body – cold, she was so cold – and gently wiped the snow from her face. Her eyes flickered open. She exhaled, a small relieved sigh, and closed them again.

He heard his name on her lips, but he couldn’t tell which one.

Solas fumbled his staff to its holster and picked her up, cradling her in his arms. She was far too light.

“Do you have her?” Cullen peered at his bundle anxiously. “I can-“

“No.” Solas said shortly.

“Is she alright?” Cassandra asked.

“She is freezing,” Solas reported, feeling her shudder in his arms. “Notify the healers. We need a tent, warm water, clean clothes, blankets –“

“On my way.” The Commander raced up the path ahead of them, then back down to the camp. Cassandra helped Solas back to camp with his burden, stabilizing them both as he went down the slippery slope.

The woman in his arms shifted, curling up against him. His heart beat in a mad, two-syllable rhythm: _Alive!_ it danced. _Alive, alive, alive, alive, alive!_

Even when they reached the camp, he found it hard to let her go.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of the Ellara Lavellan Collection! All the fics are completed and will be posted in game-chronological order every M/W/F. Thank you for reading!


End file.
